Renault 4s are the Future!

[malcolm]

I went a bit daft and bought a new car. It's a 2002 Peugeot 406 Coupe which apart from poor access getting in is a magnificent machine.

What happened was my flatmate's car had a cambelt failure so I lent him my Clio until he could find a new car. I ran around in the Renault 4. We both looked at car sales websites, went to see a few cars but they were all rubbish. Looked at the 406 Coupe and it was tolerable so I decided to have that and sell the Clio to my flatmate.

Just a week later the 406 was broken - it's an electrical fault partly brought on by a dishonest seller not warning me of a battery drain. It's fixable, mostly because I have some very clever friends, but these things are really complex with dozens of ECUs, and it's a learning experience - bad wiring is tricky to trace even with fault reading stuff, and information difficult to come by, so I suspect it will be off the road for a few weeks yet.

For most people the cost of having such things fixed would more than write off an otherwise perfectly good 9 year old car. I don't think many modern cars will survive past 10 years old.

But the Renault 4 goes on forever so I'm driving around in that and I'm loving it. I'm bonding with the Gordini in a way I didn't do when I was using her as a second car.

I reckon Renault 4s or similar cars are what we'll all be driving in the future (unless we've got a load of money to waste). Keep yours good - it'll come in handy!

 

[Eoynteenie]

(unless we've got a load of money to waste)

cars are money pits, no matter what they are.
Only thing that counts if you're happy driving them, and i was very happy driving my little R4, can't wait till i get it finished and back on the road as the the Saab is starting to annoy me for being out of action when it was meant to be a replacement car

least i still have my motorbike, and its the same deal with them now

 

[pepper]

I love my 4, I've had a week of spending some money on her, she's had some welding done, which I wanted doing to keep on top of the chassis, but the mechanic commented on just how good she is underneath!

I've also bought another set of alloys (the Soleil ones on EBay the other week) so the Gordini wheels will be for sale if anyone wants a set, and I'll probably get them resprayed and get rid of the red highlights that Malcolm likes so much before I put them up for sale.

So £200 spent and it's all looking good again, I also spoke to a tyre warehouse place in Nuneaton who sell ex German winter tyres, and they are finding me a nice set of standard winter 135's for the Alloys so it'll be standard ish! (all good for if we take her to stay in France).

I'll only have spent £300 and it'll make it even better than it was before. I had a plastic manifold snap on my Transit the other week that was over £300 for a bit of poxy plastic!

 

[Bobble]

I agree with you pepper, mine since it's first trip to Thenay it's done nearly 9000 miles and on a long journey will do 60 - 65 mpg but i still hav'nt as yet replaced the wings, bumpers and number plates but hoping to do that over the winter and then respray in the summer ready for Thenay again.

 

[Eoynteenie]

I've also bought another set of alloys (the Soleil ones on EBay the other week) so the Gordini wheels will be for sale if anyone wants a set, and I'll probably get them resprayed and get rid of the red highlights that Malcolm likes so much before I put them up for sale.

the radio active sign ones?

 

[pepper]

Not sure about radioactive? Are you talking about my old Gordini wheels or the Soleil wheels?

 

[godlike]

The R4 is a nice car to drive for me. But I wanted a safer car and with more HP and last a car with that I can go on holiday.

I'll sum up. It's my first car and I'll will always remember it, but the new car is ordered.

Enough off topic. We had an Hyundai Lnatra 1997 (220 000km) lasted 12 years. Nothing broke died,...., went to junkyard with the first exhaust. Ohh, yes once the motor for the window fluid died (replaced). So my R4 drank more money and has only 78310 km driven.

 

[Firstandbest]

Lol Almost fell for all that Ian! Since I bought your r4 2 years ago I've spent £500 on initial servicing with Derek. Negligible since. Driven 5000 miles without a hiccup. Even bought two new tyres (on wheels) for £5 as spares
Dabbled with cosmetics (wings & bonnet) but that was discretionary spending.
I get over 40 mpg. Insurance around £100. No electronic 'black boxes' to shock me.
So in short, I'm with you Malcolm! A long term proposition.

 

[Bobble]

:smile:Yep i agree he's very convincing but no matter what others say you will not get me to part with mine ( except for another R4 ) there good fun quirky and as you say no black box and still get you from A to B with minimum of fuss.

 

[Firstandbest]

... And we all belong to a very exclusive club!
Happy Christmas to all

 

[Eoynteenie]

setting the points, welding the rear wheel arch, making the petrol gauge work, freezing your way from Bedford to Lancaster, unable to read a map by the courtesy light in Malmsbury when you are trying to get to Wells, hitting the curb because of inadequate headlights, unable to see through the windscreen in damp and cold conditions (and you have run out of Starbucks tissues), cant stand the wining noise of the rear wheel bearings, not being able to listen to your rubbishy Halfords radio, incapable of making the seat adjustment work etc etc.

tick, tick, tick, tick,...etc. etc....hell....i've done a lot of this on a 1970's Honda CB250N Superdream, do i win?

I say we strip your Yaris and use it to improve our R4's to compete with todays life of sat navs and smart phones. its what my plan is ^-^

 

[Eoynteenie]

Not sure about radioactive? Are you talking about my old Gordini wheels or the Soleil wheels?

had a look, mk1 gordini rims, remind me of the Radioactive sign....no idea why.

 

[alewis]

A minor point - the new cars that were mentioned were new! No R4's are new mine are 27 and 40 years old !

I hate to think what 27 or 40 year old electrics will be like to repair on a yaris or alike

Its easy to spend £1000 on fixing a 4 year old new car - with a R4 £1000 can go a long way.

 

[malcolm]

That's the thing. From 1995 most executive cars have had a dozen ECUs and multiplexed wiring. 2003 most large family cars, from 2005 even small family cars. Difficult to diagnose and expensive to fix, a dirty connector can well write off an otherwise perfectly good car. It's just an expense to consider when buying second hand cars these days.

 

[angel]

An R4 can cover the basic transportation needs of most people (and more, if one is willing to compromise on absolute/average travel speed) and literally cost a fraction of a modern car (or almost modern, as Malcolm's 406). Here, there are many people living in a city that need to make a long motorway trip one or two times a year, but insist on owning medium-to-large sized cars (or worse, SUVs), and then complain about maintenance costs.

What is surprising is that, at least here, people are willing to spend money on "money-eating" cars because they think it's worth it. The instrument cluster of the 406 (typical problem with these) costs about 250 euros to buy secondhand, and is by no means essential to replace, but their owners will not think twice; they go ahead and have it replaced, beacause they think they preserve the car's value in this way...Not so with an R4 (or any other car like this), even though the respective part costs exactly ten times less!v They think that even 80 euros are too much for a car worth 500 euros when (and if...) it is going to be sold.

A Yaris may never break down like a Citroen or VAG car does,but if you break a headlamp, it's hundreds of euros, on the R4 is less than half of this. The same goes for anything on the car, be it a wing / a set of spark plugs / a set of shock absorbers a fuel pump...without counting the hundreds of parts (mostly electrics/electronics) that a modern car has and an R4 does not, and are always possible to break down and let you on the side of the road.

I have a good view of a today's car maintenance costs, as it's my job, and always feel lucky to use an R4 (ok three!) as an everyday car (every week should it be really called, I'm moving around with a motorbike) rather than any modern car!

 

[malcolm]

I don't know why you keep going on about the Yaris. It is an old model and benefits from not having so much expensive to repair equipment. It'll likely reach the point where repairs cost more than the car is worth when it is about 12 years old.

New one will last less than that, and the one after that even less. I reckon we'll soon be at the point where it is difficult to pick up a reasonably cheap car and run it for a few years without spending much money.

 

[snailshed]

Prestige Woes

Hi All,
I couldn't agree more with the basic R4 / 2cv ethos that something that is dog kennel simple with decent spares back up is near endlessly repairable, and with the benefit of some modern vehicle advances (electronic ignition for example) can be perfectly reliable every day. After a time it becomes like keeping a Stately Home, in that if you replace 5% of the car a year through ongoing maintenance you can assume to replace the whole car once every 20 years!

The factor missing from the above is the perception of you as a person because you drive the R4 and like it. My daily is a 29 year old, multi coloured 2cv and while it is cheap, thoroughly effective, totally reliable and I completely love it, I was advised that in the interests of my career, I'd be best to dispose of it for something that 'better projects your corporate image'.

It dumping two litres of petrol onto the work carpark (outside the front window) might have been an influencing factor mind...

 

[ian Stanbury]

Sorry Malcolm..

All reference to 'that' car have now been removed - I really shouldn't have 'gone on' about it should I?

'Shine on you Silver diamond'...or is it green Mark or Pink?

 

[Firstandbest]

Gracefully done Ian!

Still think that was a total wind up! And it worked

Happy Christmas to you and yours. A drive in 'our car' awaits in the New Year.

Mark

PS For those who commented on my earlier thread, I prefer the black side protectors and will be reverting to these over Christmas. Thanks

 

[Lobster]

Unfortunately its part of the throwaway society we live in that considers a car 'worthless' after seven or eight years hence people are less inclined to spend on maintenance and more problems arise.

That said, when things do go wrong on newer cars they are more expensive to fix by a fairly considerable factor. My two 'new' cars both date from 2004 - SEAT Toledo Sport and Renault Kangoo dci. The Toledo has been in general boringly reliable aside from a broken gearbox (1st and 2nd went AWOL, as did slightly over £1k from my bank in the process) but otherwise its brilliant. On 78k now and I don't know how I would replace it as after five years I still love it.

Kangoo is a newer addition to the fleet and is currently in disgrace - alternator belt decided to shred itself on the motorway on Thursday, bits got into the cambelt which had a little skip around - fortunately with no major engine NOM NOM NOMing damage. Also crankshaft oil seal decided to take early retirement so I'm currently waiting to see how financially battered I will end up. Heres a picture of it reclining in its natural habitat

R4s are a lot cheaper to run but as with anything older, I'm not sure how well they would stand up to continual, hard use. I reckon if you tried to do 25k per year in an R4 the costs of fixing it would add up pretty quickly.